How to Paint a Dead Man Quotes

“You’ve been wondering lately when the moment is that somebody is truly lost to you.”
― Sarah Hall, How to Paint a Dead Man

“Of all the conditions we experience, solitude is perhaps the most misunderstood.”
― Sarah Hall, How to Paint a Dead Man

“He told her the flowers in her painting contained exactly the purple substance of the flowers on the desk in front of her [...] Let us open the window and see if your painting can entice the butterflies.”
― Sarah Hall, How to Paint a Dead Man

“You didn’t understand what he was saying, until he kissed you. It was a kiss of such complicity, of such uncomplicated sympathy, that you felt for the first time not alone in your suffering.”
― Sarah Hall, How to Paint a Dead Man

“You’ve found that there is something that can make you feel, and make you feel present: sex. Not the routine, dusk-and-dawn sex of a trusted, established relationship, but illicit, dangerous sex. Sex that is novel and leaves you sore; that is experienced in the gaps between your mundane, moral life; that is strange and breathless and addictive.”
― Sarah Hall, How to Paint a Dead Man

“There is always half a truth in cliche.”
― Sarah Hall, How to Paint a Dead Man

“We should not forget that when we limp away afflicted through the spirit, it is not to the factory gates or to the corporate steps we pilgrimage. Instead we go to the sea for its salt. We find shade under the sycamores on the great avenues. Or we go to the rivers where water tells us modestly of its own sickness.”
― Sarah Hall, How to Paint a Dead Man

“We should not forget that when we limp away afflicted through the spirit, it is not to the factory gates or to the corporate steps we pilgrimage. Instead we go to the sea for its salt. We find shade under the sycamores on the great avenues. Or we go to the rivers where water tells us modestly of its own sickness. I cannot say that I have found peace now. But I have never loved with greater strength than in this place, with its earth the color of verdaccio and its generous fruit.”
― Sarah Hall, How to Paint a Dead Man

“Personal effects: how irrelevant they are, how sad, how lost, how vagrant, without the force that gives them purpose.”
― Sarah Hall, How to Paint a Dead Man

“The two of you are different now, calmer. There is still sex, occasionally, but is no longer a priority to seduce or be seduced by him.”
― Sarah Hall, How to Paint a Dead Man

“All innocent mechanisms are muddied up with experience. Children become less and less translucent. Layers of guile and suspicion grow. It's the law of paternal disenchantments.”
― Sarah Hall, How to Paint a Dead Man

“You are comprised of a million tiny locks. There’s no master key to be found, encased in the plush velvet heart, no matter how desperately you ask someone to reach in and grope around. No matter how hard you try to find it.”
― Sarah Hall, How to Paint a Dead Man

“You can’t quite catch sight of yourself as you go about your life, that’s all. Your body doesn’t contain its spirit, just as the mirror has relinquished your portrait. You are elsewhere”
― Sarah Hall, How to Paint a Dead Man